Vio on both PCBs: 3.3V (connected or not to drive)Resistance from Vio to gnd: - donor PCB: 5.33k not connected, 4.9k connected to drive - failing PCB:5.25K No continuity from Vio to HDA pins.

Vcore on donor PCB: 1.24V, failing PCB: 3.44V (connected or not to bad drive) . Not a BD9109FVM regulator I think, but has matching pinout. Resistance from Vcore to gnd: - donor PCB: 166ohm does'nt change connected or not to drive- failing PCB: was first 98ohm, 48.5ohm after powering a few seconds to read voltages, then 15.3 ohm after powering another time ( sign of melting MCU?)No continuity neither from Vcore to HDA pins.

There is 6.6ohm between VCM pins on both drives. On both disconnected PCBs, its near 160k, so servo winding should be OK.

Interesting thing: good drive spins up even when HDA disconnected -> it does'nt need to detect preamp.

Anyway, even if we know now it is not a DIY situation, I am very willing to go on for a head swap...

The most important files on this drive are some work I could do again, so losing them is'nt dramatic. It's already some years this drive broke and I never needed it really since.

Also:- I have access to a clean room,- I am conscious some training would be needed: planning to do this first with old 3.5' dead drives without needing the clean room,- this would show me what are the issues, and let me search how to solve them (if possible).- probably I would need appropriate tools, some are already identified:+ a stable workbench (could be DIY one), + a system to unmount cleanly the VCM magnet (I know how strong they are, surely my fingers remember it )+ the corresponding headcomb I can't build myself, but some are not really expensive (even for a one-time use)

Last but not least, supposing a perfect head swap can be done, is there another necessary step then, like adjusting some parameters in RAM,or would the drive straightforward work again .

(...)Last but not least, supposing a perfect head swap can be done, is there another necessary step then, like adjusting some parameters in RAM,or would the drive straightforward work again .

It should work ...

If you have something like an hardware based imager (like DDI, PC3K-DE, etc) the better but if not and assuming you did your job well and there are no dust particles on the platters/heads and the new heads don't get "dirty" by reading damaged surface on platters, etc ... you shouldn't need to "adjust" anything (firmware related) on your drive.

Also if there are NO adaptives on that PCB ROM as you were already told then you don't have much to worry about .... You just need to swap the heads and of course return here to tell us if you did manage to do so with sucess or if it was a complete disaster !

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